Gay bishops have changed my mind

As the question of homosexuality and the Anglican Communion seems to be in the air, I read two books to enlighten me. They have had the disconcerting effect of making me revise my judgment about the whole matter.

I used to think that it was intolerable for anti-gay bigots to use their repellent prejudices to blackmail the harmless Anglican homosexuals, many of whom have enriched the Church with their many gifts. But these two American books have made doubt shimmer through me.

First, a memoir which I consider a masterpiece. Honor Moore's The Bishop's Daughter, published by W. W. Norton in America. I don't know if it is available here. Honor Moore is a renowned and good poet and journalist. Her father was a wonderful Bishop of New York, much loved for his tireless work for the poor and the underprivileged.

He was a war hero in the US Marines, married young, was ordained in the Catholic tradition of American Episcopalianism and worked in disadvantaged parishes, inspired by the old Anglo-Catholic slum priests of yore. He and Mrs Moore had seven children, of whom Honor was the eldest, and as she grew older and her emotional and sexual life blossomed, she became aware that all was not well with the marriage of her mother and father.

By the time Paul Moore became Bishop of New York, his wife had announced she was staying behind in Washington and living separately. Honor rather assumed that her mother was a little nuts, and that it was she who was responsible for whatever was amiss.

At one stage, Honor overheard a conversation between her mother and a female friend, speculating about whether Paul might be homosexual. After his wife's death, Paul Moore was married again, to a woman called Brenda, whom his children hated. She became an alcoholic and died in her early fifties. The bishop also drank dangerously, and there were tremendous rows, both with wives and his children.

By the time he had retired - a hero of the Civil Rights movement, adored by the faithful, and a great figure in New York, there were complaints about his behaviour with another priest. But it was only when he was dead that the full extent of Bishop Moore's hidden life became known to the rightly named Honor - who tells the truth with no air of vengeance - only a ruthless honesty.

For 30 years, Bishop Moore had a secret lover - whom Honor met after her father's death. The bishop dated other women, as well as having an alcohol-fuelled gay life. Obviously, for the daughter who revered her father, it was shattering stuff.

But the novelistic complexity of it all never once made me feel that he would have been a better man if - an impossible thing at that date - he had "come out" and continued in office as a practising gay bishop. Indeed, the "hypocrisy" and the torment were almost certainly part of what made him such a powerful pastor, preacher and bishop.

Then I turned to Bishop Gene Robinson's In the Eye of the Storm (Canterbury Press). This is the famous Bishop of New Hampshire, who is not being asked to the Lambeth Conference for fear of upsetting the bigots. Whereas I felt that the tormented Bishop Moore's life was marked with the sign of the cross, Bishop Gene's ministry appeared to come marked with one of those smiley faces with which some soppy girls dot their i's.

Like Bishop Moore, Bishop Robinson was married with children. Like Bishop Moore, he is alcoholic. But instead of thinking that torment and concealment and self-criticism are part of life, he seems to believe that the Christian gospel means God accepting everyone as they are - with no suggestion of denying the self, and taking up the cross.

Rather than seeing the collapse of his marriage as central to the story, he raises the issue of "sexuality" to a pinnacle of importance which makes it seem ridiculous. His book is that of an advanced egomaniac. He quotes 1 John 4:18 - "Perfect love casteth out fear" - thereby unintentionally reminding us of the old joke about the person who missed out the numeral 1 in that text, giving the quote not from John's First Epistle, but from the 18th verse of the fourth chapter of the Gospel: "The man whom thou now hast is not thy husband".